In 2010, Michael Jenkins and Carlos Souza each earned Skoll Awards for their innovative work to preserve forests and promote both conservation and sustainable development in South America and around the world. Jenkins, Founder of Forest Trends, a Washington, DC-based international non-profit organization that pioneered the concept of financial incentives for the “ecosystem services”, and Souza, Senior Researcher at Imazon (Amazon Institute of People and the Environment), a leading Belém, Brazil-based research institution focused on spatial analysis and remote sensing for mapping and monitoring forest changes, recently reconnected as participants in The Wellbeing Project.
We recently chatted with them about the interconnections between their environmental work and ideas of wellbeing, their own paths to this work, and how their organizational leadership reflects the lessons of their personal inner wellbeing process.
This is an excerpt from the article, Nature, Wellbeing, and Social Change: A Conversation with Carlos Souza and Michael Jenkins by Zach Slobig.
This article is a part of a special series on the connection between inner well-being and social change, in partnership with The Wellbeing Project, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Schwab Foundation at the World Economic Forum, and Skoll Foundation.
